Endland
by Seeroftodayandtomorrow
Summary: Apocalypse Au. Kurt is a prostitute, jaded from the way his world fell apart. Blaine is a policeman, trying to maintain some kind of order in the midst of chaos. When Kurt discovers something that may cost him his life, he wants to pay Blaine for his protection - in the way he usually does. But he soon discovers that sex with Blaine can never be just business.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Thanks to my beta, voyageasia!**  
><strong>I stole the title and the setup from a German table top role playing game.<strong>  
><strong>This is an Apocalypse-Au, which means a lot of dead people. Not Kurt and Blaine, though :) There will also be some violence, though not too graphic, and prostitution. If any of that bothers you, please don't read.<strong>

Kurt flees when the water closes in. Unlike many others, he survives the first flood, because he doesn't bother to try and salvage any of his few belongings first. He runs with nothing but the clothes on his back.

He is probably more observant than most. He watched the tides rise over the years, and he is convinced it is nothing that would just _stop, _as a lot of others seem to think. Seven years ago, his parents' house, once a comfortable distance away from the edge of the sea, was washed away, taking his parents and most of their belongings with it.

He built a hut out of driftwood higher up, took the first boat that was washed ashore, repaired it and tried to keep up business. Soon, however, he had to admit that it wouldn't work. Like most children, he had learned his father's trade from the cradle. It wasn't that he doesn't know anything about being a fisherman; he knows everything there is to know. He even has some knowledge about his father's side-business of boat repairs. He even is good at it, to some degree, but he found he couldn't do the work alone that used to keep all three of them busy. Even if he only had himself to sustain now.

So, soon he took up a side-business of his own. It started with a rushed hand job for the butcher behind his house when his wife, tired from another pregnancy, took a nap, and a free side of lamb for Kurt. It takes off from there. He doesn't mind much. There is a grim satisfaction when the same people that had mocked him as a child for his slight build and peculiar ways are now begging for him and panting his name. It pays well, and it isn't as hard as the backbreaking work most of his neighbors do.

So it isn't that he doesn't mind leaving his village and all his belongings when the water comes. It takes time to establish a clientele, after all, and ironically he became good friends with a lot of them over the years.

It's just that he knows he can get by anywhere, and he is pretty sure that what he has to offer will always find buyers.

So he runs. The water rises quickly and higher than anyone could imagine, and it doesn't leave again. It is always there when he turns, and closer than he would like, a brown mass of water with trees and remains of houses and a lot of bodies swimming in it. But he gains ground and soon the water isn't just a day's walk behind him, but further away. He warns people as he passes. Some heed him, some don't. There has been other alarming news: it's not just the water. In the South, the mountains explode, giving the name of the old children's game, 'The floor is lava', a whole new, deadly meaning. In the North, winds arise that soon become one strong, insistent storm that makes the land uninhabitable and destroys everything in its wake. In the West, there are landslides, burying everything under a layer of mud.

"The elements take revenge," superstitious people say. "Man has become too confident, too sure of his own importance. This is nature taking care of the problem."

Kurt doesn't know if this is true. He doesn't really care, to be honest. He runs for his life, though he doesn't know where. If there is danger everywhere, does it even make sense to run? But the alternative is to just sit somewhere and wait till he drowns, so he runs.

The things he sees during his escape aren't pretty. He sees people being attacked and sometimes killed for their coat or a piece of bread they might be carrying. Fresh graves, lovingly if hurriedly dug by people who lost a loved one on the flight, are looted for any possession that might be left on the body.

But there's kindness also, strangers taking turns carrying a small child as the mother becomes too weak, an old man declaring himself too old to flee offering his home as shelter for fugitives, people sharing food and companionship on the way.

He runs for days, weeks, and he loses count of time. He sleeps when he dares, on the side of the road, hidden in bushes, his knife always close. He doesn't think, doesn't feel anything past his exhaustion and his hurting feet, and the ever-present fear. He's too busy trying to somehow survive, and sometimes, it's a close call. Some people think he's weak and want his boots or his knife, but he's a lot stronger than he looks, muscles lean but still steeled by work, and there are still some decent people who help him fight off the attackers, who afterwards even share their food and the comparative security of a night not spent alone.

He eats what he can get. Sometimes, nothing. On some days, he finds enough on the way to get by, on others, he is entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers, which is fickle at best. He can't trade for what he needs, because he doesn't own anything, and it turns out that people who run for their lives have other things on their minds than sex.

His skills all seem useless here. No fishing; he'd have to go back to the water and there's no way he's doing that; also, he'd probably catch all kinds of things other than fish. He earns a scant meal helping to fix the broken axis of a wagon, but most people are on foot, carrying whatever belongings they have left on their backs. No singing, either. Though it's the thing he's always been best at, people at home have found it too frivolous -you can't eat music, after all. And here, it's out of place at best and actually dangerous at worst. So, no music to brighten their journey (is it a journey? Doesn't a journey need a destination?). So be it.

Eventually, the flight loses its urgency, as things are prone to do. The water is days away, and though he hears it's still rising, it is slower now. Kurt entertains a mild, detached curiosity as to how much longer he'll have to go until he first sees the earth that has buried everything beneath it. Or the lava, if he should turn south. Or if the winds in the North have slowed down too, maybe enough that people could go back and start rebuilding. Mostly, though, he avoids thoughts like this, as any thought at all that doesn't have to do with how to survive one more day.

Then, one morning, he trips and falls. The thing he trips over is a boot half-buried in the grass, and he carefully avoids looking at it, because while it might just be discarded and full of holes, there is also the possibility that something might still be sticking in it, _out _of it, and he very much prefers not to know. People may have stopped drowning, mostly, but that doesn't mean they have stopped dying.

When he tries to rise, he finds his ankle hurts, badly.

He knows there's not much use in calling for help. People won't answer, everyone is too tied up in their own struggle. He tries it anyway, calls until he is hoarse, and defiantly refuses to cry. He clenches his teeth against the pain and stands up, limps a few steps, finds he can bear it. Still, there's no way he can go on running like he did. He needs to rest for a few days and just hope that the pain goes before the water comes.

So, he limps on, away from the road and the suspicious boot, steadying himself on the occasional tree until he finds a stick to support him. He finds a clearing that is actually quite pleasant, but when he hears water, he panics, looking wildly around, wondering if he has gone back farther than he thought. He prepares to run for his life, the pain in his ankle be damned, but when his heart ceases to beat quite so loudly, he can hear that it can't be the flood. It's a small sound, nothing as loud and threatening like the sound of the approaching sea; more of a ripple, and behind some trees, he discovers a small stream.

That settles it. He'll stay here, just for a few days until walking doesn't hurt so much anymore.

His sense of time is vague at best, but he thinks he ends up staying two weeeks.

It's just so nice. For the first time since the water came, something is just nice. He is alone, surrounded by singing birds and the much too trusting hares that he catches and cooks, though not without regret. He washes in the stream, himself as well as his clothes, and though the already threadbare fabrics lose on substance, it feels luxurious.

He makes himself a bed out of moss and soft grass, and he sleeps a lot. Deeply, too, not on constant alert like he had on the road, with his knife always in his hand, and slowly, the bone-deep weariness that had seemed like the normal state of things subsides.

The weather stays cold and clear for the most part, and though he is miserable when it rains, he dries soon enough.

He very industriously avoids thinking about the way his world had ended, how everyone he knew is probably dead, how he has no where to go and no idea if, say, a month from now he'll still be alive.

He doesn't recognize his reflection in the stream. The put together, slight, pale young man he had been has become rugged. He is tanned, his freckles are more pronounced, and he has grown a beard that he hates but has no means to get rid of. His clothes, once simple but of good quality and tailored, are not much more than rags now.

They don't do much to keep out the cold anymore.

One night, he wakes because he is so cold, and he realizes that he has no idea how to survive outside in winter. Will he be able to find food, will there be shelter? How will he keep warm?

He doesn't know.

His foot has long since stopped to hurt, but still, he stays. He likes it here, and even if he leaves, goes on the road again, where will he go? Where is there to go?

Only then the nights become so cold he is hardly able to sleep at all, even huddled to his little fire, and the grass in the mornings is covered with white frost. And he realizes that if he stays, one morning not so far away, he won't wake up.

So he leaves.

He is alone now; the road is empty. Even the slowest of those that haven't drowned are now in front of him, gone for many days.

The water, if it is still rising, must be close now, no more than a few days behind. Sometimes he thinks he can hear it. He has dawdled too long.

Still, in some ways, it feels good to be on the road again, to be doing something. Somewhere in his mind, he is aware that his time on the meadow was nothing more than a wait for something to happen, anything, even death. He doesn't want to die; after all, he chose to run again over dying a gentle death by freezing. Now, at least he feels he is actively choosing life, even if he still doesn't know where he is going, or how long life is going to last.

He spends his lonely days on the road and his cold, miserable nights on the side of it. Now, he sings as he walks, any song he remembers, loud, unafraid. But when he curls up somewhere to try and get some sleep, more often than not he finds himself crying. He doesn't really know why (except he does, of course), and he angrily brushes the tears away before sheer exhaustion forces him to sleep.

In the end, it doesn't take long. One morning, after walking just a few miles, when the sun is rising above the horizon, he sees a town.

A city, really, as in addition to the older, solid houses, flimsy barracks are being built to accommodate the masses of fugitives that have arrived. There are people everywhere in the city.

And they are building a wall around it.


	2. Chapter 2

It's not so far after all. He arrives shortly before noon, though it's hard to tell exactly on such a cloudy, rainy day. A few steps before the wall-to-be he stands and just - stares. He has never seen so many people before, which is somewhat ironic considering that a few weeks before, there were a lot more people than there are now. Some part of his mind tells him to be glad that all those people survived, and he is, he really is, but just now, it's hard to feel this way. Everything is overwhelming, and somehow, it hits him now: that his old life is over for good. That nothing in his life will ever be the way it once was.

He shakes his head quickly and violently to get over the feeling. This is not the time: already he can see curious eyes directed at him. Not the place to break down; there is no way but forward. So he takes a deep breath and walks towards the person nearest to him. Or perhaps there's another one who's a bit nearer, but the one he chooses, he looks at him...a little less curiously, more welcoming. As if, and he is aware how absurd that is, as if he were truly happy to see him.

"Um," he says, his voice hoarse. It's not in disuse, he has sung a lot the last few days, but he still has to clear his throat and try again. He hasn't talked to another person in weeks.

"Hi," he starts again, hesitantly meeting the friendly, expectant eyes of the other man. He seems to be a guard of some kind, a soldier; he has a battered gun by his side and wears something that is probably supposed to pass for a uniform.

"I'm - can I ask you a question?"

"You're new, aren't you? I'm glad you're here," the guard says, and Kurt understands what he doesn't say: _I'm glad you're alive._ Either way, he appreciates the sentiment. He manages a smile in thanks.

"Um, what's with the...wall?" he asks. _What - or whom - are you trying to keep out?_

"Look, if you're new here, you have to get registered. I'll take you to the office, and on the way, I'll explain everything you need to know, alright? Including the wall."

"Register, huh? I'm glad to hear bureaucracy hasn't died."

It's meant to be a joke, but the guard doesn't laugh. He just smiles a little tight-lipped and explains,

"It's necessary so we can estimate how many people live here. We are already rationing the food, because if there isn't any arable land again soon, there will be problems. I'm sure you'll agree it's better to be prepared."

Kurt mumbles something incomprehensible, because this is something he hasn't thought of at all, and also it does nothing to answer his questions, instead raising about fifty new ones.

"So, officer - the wall?" he prompts, but the man beside him laughs a little and says,

"Please don't call me officer. I'm just part of the new militia, we don't have an official title yet."

"So what do I call you?"

"Well - my name is Blaine."

"Kurt," Kurt says, taking the offered hand and then staring at Blaine as long as it takes to make him laugh sheepishly, look away and say,

"Right, the wall. This town here, it's presumably the only one left. We're right in the middle. A few miles in any direction, and you walk right into water, lava, depends on where you go. This town is the only place left, everything else is gone. We don't know if this place is safe. We've been spared yet, but who knows? So the wall is us trying to feel a little bit safer. It won't do much against storms, of course, but maybe it will help keep the water and the other stuff out. You're expected to put in a few hours a day to help building it. You'll be given food, somewhere to stay, and some clothes if you need them in return."

"So you're not trying to keep anyone out? People, I mean?"

Blaine looks at him strangely. "I don't think anyone else is coming. Before you, there haven't been any new arrivals for at least a week. I think everyone else is just...gone."

It is strange how a thought like that kills all conversation. Silently, they walk beside each other, Kurt is lost in his own thoughts, but he can't really tell what he's thinking. Everything is jumbled, but first and foremost in his mind is a sense of relief. For the moment, at least, he is safe, as safe as can be with forces of nature closing in from every direction. He even feels this sense of purpose, anticipates the feeling of doing something to protect them, even though he strongly suspects that the reason for the wall is to give people this feeling just as much as to provide some protection.

He looks around a bit as they walk. He is still too overwhelmed to really take everything in, but what little he sees overwhelms him even more. Houses made of stone, old ones that are four or five stories high - no one knows how to build like that anymore. There even are a few cars, and he gapes a bit, remembering the uproar the one time a car came into his village. He can see, though, that they are not used to drive around right now. There are blankets and clothes lying in some of them, and he guesses they are used as additional places to sleep.

He registers quickly with a too formal official, and afterwards, he feels...bleak. Once more, it settles in that everything is different now. He is now an official citizen of a new city - the only city left, apparently, and god, does that feel weird.

Blaine, who seems to have nothing better to do than show him around all day, picks up on his mood.

"You'll get used to this. We'll all get used to this. Look at the bright side: you survived until now, didn't you? You lived through yet another apocalypse."

"I wasn't alive during the last one," Kurt says sullenly, but Blaine is right. Some ancestor of his survived the last apocalypse, about a hundred years ago, that didn't only cost a lot of lives but also whole civilizations they see the remains of but know nothing about. Someone of his family made it through that one so that Kurt could survive this. Talk about some resilient genes.

Blaine leads him through the city, back to the building site, where builders are given food and clothing stamps and are assigned some place of accommodation. Kurt doesn't expect much, and that's exactly what he receives. Still, the clothes he is given may be threadbare and not fit exactly, but they do more than only cover the necessary places, and he is pathetically grateful for the warmth they offer. He is asked if he wants a razor, and he nods emphatically and promises himself a lot of private time with it as soon as he gets to a place with some water.

His new lodgings are a cot in a one-room wallboard hut, one of three, but his roommates aren't there. He feels a little lost without Blaine, who has gone back to his duties, but he takes the opportunity of the privacy to make use of the bowl of fresh water on the single dresser and wash and finally get rid of the beard. Then he sits down on the cot he assumes is his; the others have nails in the walls behind them with clothing hung on them. He dresses in his new clothes and lays the old ones down on the bed to mark it as his, resolving to find needle and thread as soon and possible to see if he can salvage anything. He has a feeling he shouldn't let anything go to waste.

Then he ventures outside once more. He blinks; the light seems too bright after the dim interior of the hut, despite the overcast sky, and when he can see properly again, he gulps. It will take time to find his place among all those people, who all look so busy and as if they belong exactly where they are, leaving him on the outskirts, a mere observer.

He sighs, and walks over to the buildings site, rolls up his sleeves, and goes to work.

A few days go by. He meets his roommates, two girls called Santana and Rachel who are, as far as he can tell, completely different but both equally hard to bear. Santana seems constantly angry, and is either taciturn in a sullen, poisoning way, or downright mean. Rachel is so naïve it hurts, and much too chatty for his frayed nerves. He is polite but distant, as is his way, though both of them seem to do their best to provoke him to the cutting, cold remarks he was feared for in his village.

He soon is in the hut only to sleep.

He looks around the city as soon as he dares without Blaine, or anyone, to guide him. He marvels at the high buildings and the cars, and wishes for his dad to be here; he would have given a lot to see this. He even talks to people and kind of makes friends with Millie, the lady who passes out their small meals and the excuse for coffee they get. He doesn't know if that's a blessing, though; she is sweet, but she tells him things about the food he'd rather not know.

"It's thin, but it's real coffee. When that's gone, it'll be ground nuts with sugar and some charcoal for color. When the nuts and the sugar are gone...well, you can imagine," she says, and, "We've already planted a lot of potatoes. They don't need much ground and keep well. Prepare to eat a lot of them. If it gets really bad, they're fine in a stew with rats. And mud, for the trace elements."

No, he really could have done without that knowledge.

He doesn't talk to Blaine again, though he sees him around a lot, and he waves and smiles at him but is always too busy to talk. Kurt watches him assign people their places at the wall or break up fights with a stern, but infuriatingly benevolent expression on his face, and he can't see why everyone seems to trust him so much, to trust him to have only their best interests at heart, to care. Except then again, he can.

He works on the building site a lot, and uses the time for...well, networking. After all, while the necessities are taken care of now, a time will come when the wall is finished, and it's best to be prepared. So, when a guy he pisses off somehow tells him to suck his dick, he replies, "Sure, if you can pay." He gets flipped off, but word spreads, and soon other guys approach him who take his offer seriously. It isn't an established clientele yet, and it takes some time for him to determine what he should take as payment - there's no money, but he trades his services for needles and thread, food stamps, a blanket.

So, the next time he sees Blaine, Kurt has his mouth wrapped around the cock of some guy who stands against the wall, eyes closed and mouth open in ecstasy. It's dark, and they're in a small alley, but Blaine finds them nevertheless. Kurt hears him clear his throat, and he lifts a finger to indicate he should wait, never interrupting his ministrations. When he feels the guy is close, he pulls of and lets him spill on the ground, finally lifting his head.

"Hi Blaine," he says, rises and dusts his knees while his client gathers his breath, presses some food stamps into his hands, smiles, and disappears.

"You can't do that, you know," Blaine says.

"I can, though. I'm actually very good at it."

Blaine grins, though Kurt has the feeling he'd rather not. "I mean, you can't do that in public."

"It's a back alley, Blaine, it's hardly public. Plus, I can't very well take them home. I have two roommates, it might hurt their delicate sensitivities."

Though at least in Santana's case, he doubts there are any sensitivities left to be hurt.

"You have to make arrangements. It's public indecency, Kurt, I can't allow that," Blaine says, then smiles at him. "Now, do you want to get dinner together?"

Kurt smiles and nods. He isn't fooled, though. He's seen the way Blaine looked at him while he was blowing that guy, and it was anything but offended.


	3. Chapter 3

**Thanks again to voyageasia for her help and encouragement!**

**And sorry it took so long. I'll try to not let it happen again.**

A few weeks pass, and Kurt starts to believe they might actually survive. The wall is nearly ready, seven feet high in places, ugly and uneven, but apparently sturdy enough to withstand the force of the elements.

For the elements are there. There's a sort of beach outside the wall, and then there's water, just water, nothing else to see. When the sunlight glistens on the surface, it's beautiful, until the occasional bloated corpse bobs up. It doesn't happen often, though; most corpses have long since become fish food.

Kurt loves walking along the top of the wall, ostensibly looking out for construction flaws and places that need repair, but really, he is just looking and enjoying the peace and quiet. It is still hard for him, being here with so many others. He's used to a lot of solitude, and he thinks now he never really appreciated it. But now, with two loud and nosy roommates and a very small space in a city that still seems overcrowded to him, solitude has become something rare, and he finds himself cherishing it whenever he can get it.

The view is...beautiful, actually, in a very wild, scary way. He has circled the city now, seen everything, and he still can't believe the devastation.

Water to one side, as far as the eye can see. No trace that there's ever been anything else. Mud to the other side of the city, a great brown mass of dark, wet earth that lets nothing grow, that swallows everything.

The third side looks spookiest: a jagged landscape of black, with puddles and streams of red in it so bright they color the sky. It looks like a painting, until one of the puddles starts to bubble and spit lava.

But it's the fourth side that scares Kurt the most, and not because the wind's almost enough to blow him off the wall. Because there's nothing. Oh, he knows it's really just dust and fine sand that's filling the air because the ever-blowing wind doesn't let it fall down again, but it looks like there's absolutely nothing there.

He doesn't go to that side anymore, although he probably should, because when - if - everything should stop at some point, that'll be the side that could be made habitable again first. But he doesn't care. He leaves that side to braver souls, instead staring for hours at the image of hell the world has become, in a way that's detached and comforting, because it doesn't force him to realize that it's his world.

He makes jokes about it. All of them do, coarse ones that aren't really funny, like saying they should start catching fish on the East side of the city, then walk round to the South to barbecue it.

It helps them cope.

The only one Kurt knows who doesn't do it is Blaine. He just looks at him, a small, sad smile playing around his lips, and goes right back to telling him the new rules the Administration has established.

Like, as of today, no one is allowed on top of the wall anymore, except authorized personnel for maintenance purposes.

Apparently, on the water side, a big wave caught two spectators unaware and flushed them down the wall, drowning them. So now, for safety reasons, the wall is taboo.

And Kurt soon finds he can't stand it.

He doesn't belong here. He's used to it - he hadn't belonged in his village either. But still, it's unsettling that even here, with people from all over, so different and only here because there's no where else to go, even here he's an outsider. Maybe it's hard to belong anywhere with what he does. It doesn't tend to let people warm up towards him, and though at home, he had a few friends, there were always those who looked down on him, too. Those who didn't like what he did with their husbands or friends. Here, people only look down on him - those who know about him, anyway. He's a small fish here, and not the only one by far in his line of business. Which is good because the derision isn't directed at him alone, but also means that his clientele is a lot more limited.

He needs space. He needs solitude, a break from whispers, offers, spits, moans. Even from being ignored, even from being talked to in a friendly, neutral way. A break from people.

He needs the wall.

He won't get privacy anywhere else; he still hasn't really made the effort to get to know his roommates, though at least Rachel has made numerous attempts. She has her own story, he knows; he hears her crying at night. But then, everyone has them, stories. He doesn't go to her, doesn't offer comfort. He just turns on his cot and tries to block out the sound.

Why care, when everything can fall to pieces at any moment, when they might all die tomorrow?

But then again, there's Blaine, who has somehow managed to worm his way into Kurt's ...affections without even trying. Or, with trying, but Blaine tries with everyone; Kurt has never met anyone who was liked by just about everyone, and it makes him kind of proud to be one of the few who are actually friends with him.

But Blaine won't give him back the wall. He sticks to the rules too much for that, he is always the one who explains the rules to Kurt when he complains, who sees everything Administration does in the best light.

"It's for your own safety," he says, and Kurt can't help but nod.

"But I'm going crazy in here!" he whines a moment later, and Blaine gives him a look that says he is maybe about to perhaps almost lose his patience.

"Adapt," he says with an apologetic shrug to accompany the blunt words. "We all have to do it."

So he has to find another way to get back the wall. Fortunately, there are other guards, those that actually stand at the few stairwells leading up, and he knows at least one who might...not be as straight as he thinks. Or if he is, Kurt has ways to make him forget that - at home, whether his clients were married to men or women, when they got bored with their spouses, they came to him. Here, it is different, as there are enough female whores to be had if one is so inclined - but he hasn't lost the confidence in his ability to make someone forget their sexual orientation for, say, the duration of a blowjob.

He acts strategically - no need to frighten the poor man by dropping to his knees and opening his pants without some sort of preamble. He walks past the stairs every day during the guard's shift and stops to chat with him.

The guard looks good in his uniform - or what passes as a uniform, standing tall and confident. But sometimes, or so it seems to Kurt, he looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. He looks like someone trying to mend his image, and his outgrowing hairstyle - shaved on the sides, longer in a narrow stripe in the middle - confirms this assumption. He seems like someone who wouldn't mind bending the rules every now and then, for the right enticement.

Kurt makes sure the guard knows about the way he makes his living, and he seems...curious, and when Kurt, after a few of their short daily chats, starts to flirt a little, the guard flirts back skillfully, even though it's clear he's more used to doing that with women.

Kurt has to be careful. He still hasn't managed to find a safe place for his trysts, and the streets are, apart from uncomfortable, not really popular with the general population for his kind of employment. He has been fined twice now, once by Blaine after he had caught him in the act for the third time. _Blaine_ has fined him, and he didn't even smile or apologize. Kurt would sacrifice his friendship to Blaine for his job, of course he would, but he'd much rather avoid it.

So, after a few weeks, he brushes the front of the guard's pants with the back of his hand, and then smiles and retreats into the shadows under the stairs, hoping there will be a spot unobtrusive enough for a quick though spectacular blowjob. He stands there for a while and begins to think the guard has changed his mind or didn't understand the invitation, when he appears, looking nervously around and then leans against the wall.

He gulps, starts to speak, stops, then starts again. "What...what do you want?"

A direct approach that Kurt honors with an equally direct response. "I want to be able to go on the wall."

"That's forbidden."

"I know." He puts his hand on the guard's pants and squeezes, once, what is clearly an at least half-hard cock.

The guard groans and bucks against him, but Kurt takes a step back and looks at him expectantly, until he says, quickly, "Go at dawn, half an hour is all I can give you. We have breakfast then, the wall is unguarded for a few minutes, and then I have the first round. Don't get seen by someone else."

"I won't," Kurt says, and gets on his knees.

So now, Kurt rises early like in his fisherman days, but it's worth it.

He doesn't like keeping secrets from Blaine, who offers his only other source of enjoyment in this strange city, but there's no way he would understand. Kurt doesn't want to put him in a position where he would have to choose between their friendship and his loyalty to Administration, especially since there's no way to know how Blaine would decide.

But he has the wall back. He lives for this half-hour every morning that is over much too soon and still gives him enough strength to be able to face the day. When once, a different guard has the first round and almost sees him, he has to run, almost falls and finally stops, panting, only to realize he's arrived at the North side, the one he usually avoids. Cautiously, he looks, and somehow, it doesn't scare him as much anymore. He stands, looks into the vast nothingness, and feels his own insignificance.

It is comforting.


End file.
